Critical Analyses of Children's and Young Adult Literature: Uncovering Discourses of Power and Representation About Latinx Communities

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together scholars engaging in a variety of critical methodological approaches to analyze how discourses of power and systemic forms of oppression emerge in the storylines and images represented within children and young adult literature. In addition, the symposium will explore the possibilities for resistance in children’s and young adult literature.
This symposium represents a range of critical analyses that focus on uncovering raced, class, gendered, and racist nativist perspectives of People of Color represented in this literature, including studies that engage Latinx youth to share their own critical analyses of those perspectives. This symposium is representative of cutting-edge scholarship in literacy/curriculum studies and praxis that examines critical approaches to analyzing and teaching children’s literature.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Denise Davila, The University of Texas - Austin

Papers

• Theorizing a Critical Race Content Analysis for Children's Books About People of Color - Lindsay Perez Huber, California State University - Long Beach; Lorena Camargo Gonzalez, University of California - Los Angeles

• A Critical Content Analysis of Immigration in Latinx Children's Books - Eliza G. Braden, University of South Carolina - Columbia; Sanjuana Carrillo Rodriguez, Kennesaw State University; Natasha A Thornton, Kennesaw State University

• Latinx Children's Literature Employed to Unpack Our Hostile and Racist World - Sandra Lucia Osorio, Illinois State University

• Critical (Re)Imagination in Latinx Youth Response to Commodified Young Adult Literature - Nora Peterman, University of Missouri - Kansas City

Discussant

• Denise Davila, The University of Texas - Austin